DD 5.1, 480p and 1080i in GT 4?

[London Geezer]

Well i really have to see this to believe it.
Oh wait, the PAL version won't have it anyway...... Errr.....

 

[AlNom]

It must be for a separate mode... why separate the 480p and 1080i in the text?


...then again, I'm no specialist for the Japanese language.

 

[passerby]

FYI, Dragon Quest 8 supports 1080i as well, and I have the game.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

FYI, Dragon Quest 8 supports 1080i as well, and I have the game.

I respect you passerby, but I need to know how it was accomplished technically. This is also the first I've heard of DQ8 running in 1080i, despite talking to others who also have the game.

 

[ysoya]

Even at 24 bit color and 16 bit depth, a 1080i framebuffer exceeds the PS2's VRAM. It would certainly be impressive if they did this in real-time given that consideration.

I wasn't even aware that the PS2 had an video output capable of 1080i.

Horizontal resolution may be around 640, not much as 1920.
With scanline interleaving trick, 1080i = 540p
1080i could be achieved at a little more cost.

 

[Fafalada]

I wasn't even aware that the PS2 had an video output capable of 1080i.

It does, as well as 1280x1024P - GS was originally designed for settop boxes.

Either way, in-game is out of the question. A 1080i buffer takes 2MB flat even in 16bit.

For normal rendering this gives you only two options - Either run a game single buffered, or without a ZBuffer (neither would work with a 3d game particularly well) and in each case you also have NO textures at all.

So the only alternative to even get a game using textures to run would be a multipass solution which would be swapping parts of the rendering buffer in/out of main memory, but that would render several times slower then normal single pass rendering, and it would also take away a fair share of already limited main memory.

This is how Photo mode works btw(or any other game's hi-res screengrabs you see on the web that are taken from PS2 devkits) - you render multiple smaller resolution blocks and assemble them into high resolution screen somewhere in main memory.


Of course, one could always set the video mode to 1080i, and then either display 640x480 in a small window or use CRT scaling to stretch it to the whole screen, but that would still be 640x480 in the end.

 

[AlNom]

This is how Photo mode works btw(or any other game's hi-res screengrabs you see on the web that are taken from PS2 devkits) - you render multiple smaller resolution blocks and assemble them into high resolution screen somewhere in main memory.

Kinda like Doom 3 with super high res screenshots.

 

[Cryect]

I have to say I would prefer 720p over 1080i but oh well.

 

[passerby]

but I need to know how it was accomplished technically. This is also the first I've heard of DQ8 running in 1080i, despite talking to others who also have the game.

Just like people never read the &%$!#@ *$!% manual , do people never mess around or check out the settings menu? It's right there - "standard" or "widescreen".

To clarify things I'm not running in widescreen. I use a converter to play games on a lcd monitor. The converter supports 1080i however, so I was able to check that widescreen really worked - everything becomes squeezed-up on the monitor, but there's definitely more scenery.

one could always set the video mode to 1080i, and then either display 640x480 in a small window or use CRT scaling to stretch it to the whole screen, but that would still be 640x480 in the end.

That may our reason there. But since I don't play in widescreen actively I'm not able to compare whether the 1080i mode 'looks lower resolution' compared to 480i.

 

[Inane_Dork]

Horizontal resolution may be around 640, not much as 1920.
With scanline interleaving trick, 1080i = 540p
1080i could be achieved at a little more cost.

Don't you dare call that 1080i, for it's not even close.

 

[passerby]

everything becomes squeezed-up on the monitor, but there's definitely more scenery.

I just described what Faf was describing, right? Render a "squeezed-up" image with more scenery in 640x480, but set the mode to 1080i.

 

[ultimate_end]

Well all that the text on the playstation.jp page Manuvlad posted says is
"Others: 5.1ch surround correspondence, progressive (480p) output correspondence, Hi-Vision (1080i) output correspondence".
"対応" can also mean "interaction" apparently. But I wouldn't think the "1080i" is referring to anything other than photo-mode though.

What I find interesting however, is that Kazunori Yamauchi said once that GT4 wouldn't have any progressive scan mode, because it looked awful. But now here we have the official japanese website claiming 480p. I guess they must have found a way to get it to look good then? Either that or SCE insisted that the game must have a progressive scan mode, in which case we can look forward to an "awful" looking 480p. Ofcourse, Kazunori could have been lying about it all this time and wanted to surprise us .

 

[Fafalada]

While we're on subject of upscaling - I think 720x480 is the most likely balance act here actually. It has marginally different requirements from regular 640x480P, so game wouldn't need to make any sacrifice for it at all.
It's also one of the two DTV modes that PS2 supports, and when running the game at 60hz, switching to interlaced scanning gives you 720x960, when running in higher video mode like 1080I.
With upscaling, that would make for a reasonable faximile of 1080I, and it would in fact have more pixels on screen then when viewing non-HDTV mode too.

Kinda like Doom 3 with super high res screenshots

Yep, and those also do things like photo mode with extra AA and soft shadows etc.

 

[ultimate_end]

While we're on subject of upscaling - I think 720x480 is the most likely balance act here actually. It has marginally different requirements from regular 640x480P, so game wouldn't need to make any sacrifice for it at all.
It's also one of the two DTV modes that PS2 supports, and when running the game at 60hz, switching to interlaced scanning gives you 720x960, when running in higher video mode like 1080I.
With upscaling, that would make for a reasonable faximile of 1080I, and it would in fact have more pixels on screen then when viewing non-HDTV mode too.

So you're saying that there is a chance that 480p will look great and there may in fact be a 1080i mode, even if it is sort of cheating in a sense? Sounds good to me, I mean this is the PS2 afterall .

 

[AlNom]

Is there a mention of transferring these photos to some...usb key/jumpdrive to put onto a computer

That would be awesome.

 

[cthellis42]

Thanks Faf. It was my understanding (from older posts probably including yours ) that getting it workable would be too hard to do it "truly" would produce a pile of suck, and "kludging it" would be too slow and inefficient to be of use. Like, that you could output Qix at 1080i easily, but not anything from the past five years.

My assumption was that it would be able to produce 1080i in Photo mode--since "1080i" is indeed getting bandied about even on official sites--but if it's indeed only that, or a product of some finesse and upscaling, what are so many people getting fooled by?

Ah well... it's the press. Your suggestion (720x480P --> 720x960i, which could then be upscaled or "fit to size" in 1080i) is only a 12.5% increase over 480p (at 60 hertz) so could probably be managed. The question is "how good would it look?" If it comes off well, it would be an interesting thing to see other developers adopt to make the PS2 reasonably more hi-def now that HDTV's are more common. (Not that I'd expect too much unless it were easy, though. The AAA developers will probably be moving to all next-generation high-profile products now, and other projects are less likely to be concerned with anything like that, or want to spend the resources to bring it about.)

Is there a mention of transferring these photos to some...usb key/jumpdrive to put onto a computer

It has been said that the USB port can be used to transfer files to the PC, so on USB drives: probably, since USB drives are recognized in many other forms.

 

[ultimate_end]

Is there a mention of transferring these photos to some...usb key/jumpdrive to put onto a computer

That would be awesome.

Well on the photo mode page of the website, it says that in addition to printing out the photos on a printer, "storage on USB memory is possible".
I don't know exactly what this means, but I'm assuming that it's referring to USB drives etc. It doesn't say any more about it than that unfortunately.

 

[Fafalada]

but if it's indeed only that, or a product of some finesse and upscaling, what are so many people getting fooled by?

Video mode would still switch to 1080I - which is something you can actually check on your HDTV. You can't check the actual pixel size, but as long as it looks sharper then regular NTSC(which hypothetical 720x960 would), what else is there for a user to assume?

The question is "how good would it look?"

At least 2x vertical resolution, and no flicker filtering - sharper then NTSC obviously - though the lack of filter would make interlacing more evident.
As for how easy it is - for games that already keep a stable 60fps, it really shouldn't be any harder then what they already do on interlaced displays.

 

[-tkf-]

At least 2x vertical resolution, and no flicker filtering - sharper then NTSC obviously - though the lack of filter would make interlacing more evident.

Hmm i guess my Projector would down convert it to 720P, so gone be the interlace

 

[maskrider]

Got it.

I didn't experience any framerate problem yet on 480p with a lap in the Nurburgring. Played with 1080i for only a minute and no framerate problem yet. 1080i is very clean and sharp.